


Mommy loves you

by DarkShadeless



Series: Magnolia Drive [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Halloween story, but mostly - Freeform, lots and lots of fluff, slightly creepy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 21:36:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20142355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkShadeless/pseuds/DarkShadeless
Summary: Annie has no excuse for not noticing sooner.





	Mommy loves you

**Author's Note:**

> And now for something completely different! An excursion into the pokemon fandom.  
I just played the ghost-exam in Ultramoon and this plot-bunny jumped me <<; have fun!

Annie is cleaning up in the kitchen when she sees it. It’s drizzling outside, that miserable weather that can’t be called rain. Every now and again lightning flashes far away and makes the shadows grow longer.

** _But it’s not just that. With every flash the shadows do grow longer, reaching, grasping-_ **

It’s easy to miss, especially when you are busy scrubbing at a particularly hardy spot of burnt sauce on the stovetop. That’s her only defense, later, when she tries to justify her lapse to herself. She was… busy. Distracted, humming her favorite song to herself and in the _grove_. “… trick or treat til the neighbors gonna die of fright… This is Halloween! H-”

** _Halloween… Halloween… Halloween…_ **

Her voice echoes through the kitchen in an eerie echo. Slowly, Annie stops scrubbing.

** _This is Halloween!_ **

** **

Yeah, no she’s not imagining that. The hair on the back of her neck stands on end. She doesn’t turn around. She knows better than that.

With careful, fluid motions she drops her sponge into the basin and rinses her hands. Her hum grows a little strained but she doesn’t stop.

** _This is Halloween! Halloween… Halloween… Halloween…_ **

“In this town we call home, everyone hail to the pumpkin song!” Now that she is paying attention she can see the shadows growing dark at the edges, as if they are unravelling like old cloth. Annie’s sure that if she tried she could see it, out of the corner of her eye-

But she doesn’t. It doesn’t like that.

** _Everyone hail to the pumpkin song!_ **

The echo rolls through the kitchen, trying to hit her pitch and falling short just enough to sound _wrong_, as if the creature imitating her has no idea how human voices are supposed to work but it’s trying anyway.

Always trying. Her poor baby.

“That’s right, honey. Everyone hail to the pumpkin song! Boys and girls of every age…”

The echo falls silent. When it doesn’t join her again, Annie trails off at the end of the verse. It’s one of those nights, is it?

“Oh, baby. Did a mean pokemon damage your pretty dress again?”

Silence. The shadows are no longer moving. They stay perfectly still, even when outside lightning flickers across the sky. “Aww. Show mommy, hm? She’ll fix it for you.”

* * *

Annie has to hunt through the cabinets to find it. That isn’t a first. Her little sweetheart is so shy about its costume, especially when it is broken.

Today it has stuffed it into the very last corner under the sink. Annie steels herself and half-crawls inside until she’s stuck in the cabinet to the hip. God, she should really wipe this one down more often. How does it get so dirty in here?

Well… the shredded, muddy pile of rags she finds in the back gives some answers to that question. “Oh dear.”

The costume isn’t just damaged it’s _destroyed_. The fabric is torn, the carefully woven cage of wire that used to be the head is broken open and the soggy stuffing has all but fallen out completely. Unless Annie is mistaken one of the ears has been ripped clean off.

Her heart breaks for her baby.

The shadows are still too still. It’s there, quiet now that it knows she knows. It doesn’t like people knowing about it when it isn’t wearing its costume. It always wants to be _around _people, though. It does get so lonely when it isn’t. Annie’s sure if it had it’s dress on it would hang off the seams of her own. That’s why she made little arms for its last disguise in the first place, so it could. It had _loved _it.

_And now look what happened._

Wild pokemon can be so destructive. It’s in their nature, some of them, but that doesn’t make her less angry about it when they hurt her baby. Never mind trainers. If she finds out it was a trainer’s pokemon that did this, heads will roll.

A shiver running down her spine clues her in on her darling pressing in close. It's probably looking at the… mess. The mess that used to be its most prized possession. Annie is half sure she hears a mournful whine.

She pats the air behind her blindly. Something soft and cool coils around her fingers, there and gone. “Never you worry. Mama will fix it.”

* * *

It takes her the better part of the morning to make a new pikachu costume. It’s fiddly work and it has to be _perfect_. But Annie has practice. Sadly, she has gotten a lot of that since she adopted her little sweetheart from the pokemon shelter. That only means her costumes are _better_, prettier and more comfortable, she makes herself think resolutely. The next one will be even more perfect.

In fact… why not make a bow, for this one? Her baby does like to be cute.

That’s how she finally realizes her mistake.

Annie goes fabric hunting under her bed, where all the best scraps are packed away right next to her sweetheart’s nest and…

The nest isn’t empty. She stares dumbly, squinting in the half-dark. “… Mimi?”

Mimikyu hesitates for a moment, making a sound suspiciously like a child about to cry. Then it throws itself into her arms, costume and all. Its perfectly intact, slightly dusty costume. The fabric-arms cling to her chest.

Carefully, every so carefully, Annie gathers it up and holds it close as she scoots out from under the bed. It feels like a ball of dense mist wrapped in cotton, too light and too heavy all at once. “Oh Mimi. Shhh,” she rocks it gently, like the baby it so desperately wants to be. _Her _baby. Realization settles into her stomach like a rock. “If you are here, who have I been baby talking to all day?”

The shadows are still. So is Mimi. It’s not shivering anymore. The hair on the back of her neck is prickling with coolness.

Oh _dear_.

* * *

“Who wants a bow?”

“**_Mi_**! Mimimimi! Mi! Mi!”

Mimi jumps in its chair, stretching the arms of it’s costume towards the glossy pink bow Annie just finished. There is a certain amount of possessive jealousy to it’s demanding sounds. Across the table in its own, brand-new pikachu disguise, her early morning visitor makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a growl. Its more fit to a pokemon three times its size and makes her bones rattle.

They look like they’re about to start clawing at each other under the table.

Annie clicks her tongue sharply. “No fighting!”

Under her reprimand they both slump into a sulk. Mimi’s is a little bit sulkier. Annie’s heart melts.

How could she ever mistake her darling for another pokemon? What a terrible mother she is. But that’s something she will have to come to terms with later, no sense in putting it on her baby. Either of them.

With the decisiveness of long practice she slides the bow across the table, to the right. Mimi makes a triumphant, trilling noise. Before anyone can get too upset, Annie wags her finger at them both. “Mimi will get the first bow because it was very scared this morning but there will be bows for everyone. Sharing is caring.”

Predictably, nobody is completely happy with that. They sulk some more.

Annie smiles to herself and reaches out to pat their costumes on the head. The two of them lean into her touch immediately, what she can glimpse of their real eyes falling closed in enjoyment. She has to swallow against the lump in her throat. “Mommy loves you. She loves both of you very much, okay?”

**Author's Note:**

> And that's the beginning of how Annie might or might not end up with a hoard of Mimikyu that she sews tiny costumes for. Her whole neighborhood thinks her house out there on the hill is haunted. Which it is, I mean, no kidding.


End file.
